Your View: Dartmouth residents can feel Fairhaven's pain

Tuesday

Jul 9, 2013 at 8:10 AM

Being a lifetime North Dartmouth resident, I have my own opinion of neighborhood projects. The way these projects come to life can make you scratch your head at times. The little guy lost, or may have been misled once again. Permits pass magically through local government at a miraculous rate.

GLENN GRENIER

Being a lifetime North Dartmouth resident, I have my own opinion of neighborhood projects. The way these projects come to life can make you scratch your head at times. The little guy lost, or may have been misled once again. Permits pass magically through local government at a miraculous rate.

Let's rewind what seems like a lifetime ago. Things here in Dartmouth were peaceful and quiet. We were a typical, quiet, New England farm town. Then for whatever reason, things started to change and the world we once knew was gone. Route 195 came through; the Paskamansket Country Club was transformed into the Dartmouth Mall. Faunce Corner Road cut through people's yards and became a four-lane highway. Route 6 exploded into a mega-shopping hot spot and the drive-in theater was torn down for Walmart.

This new and improved Dartmouth was to become the surrounding neighbor's windmill, so to speak. We were never asked if we were OK with the destruction of the farm and woodlands that first brought our parents here. We weren't given a choice as to how close Faunce Corner Road came to our property so the mall traffic could flow. Our world was ripped apart, paved over and built up, and there was nothing we could do about it.

When I hear people complain about noise of a wind turbine, I have to laugh just a bit. Sit in my backyard and listen to the traffic, the police cars and the bass booming from some knucklehead's car on a typical day. I will take your "whoosh" from a turbine any day. No one ever did a noise study, nor did they ever think of paying to insulate my house to make the noise go away.

Some people want the turbines shut down at night so they can sleep. Could you please shut down Faunce Corner Road from say 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.? The noise is just too much for me. I really have nothing to compare just what flicker is, but from what I read, it can be quite annoying.

Have any of you driven around the mall at Christmastime trying to get home for dinner? I'm willing to bet it is much more annoying than any flicker an industrial turbine has to offer. Some say flicker may cause health issues. It could possibly make some people turn crazy. My blood pressure goes off the charts every time I try to run an errand anywhere near the mall on a typical Saturday. Believe me, I am way beyond crazy most of the time.

Fairhaven is a beautiful, historical place, and I have no idea what people are thinking when they choose the spots for these projects. I totally understand the frustration the surrounding neighbors have to endure. Unfortunately, just as historic Smith Mills was torn apart to make way for the mall, Fairhaven has also seen the wrath of uncontrollable development.

However, if years ago we Dartmouth residents were given a choice to put in 100 turbines instead of our shopping mega-nightmare, guess which I'm picking. I know just about any family living around the mall would probably agree. Nobody wants anything built in their backyard. Just remember, there is always somebody worse off than you.